


irritatingly beautiful

by Bobaleia



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Established Relationship, Everyone survives Jabba's palace, F/F, F/M, Kissing, Polyamory, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27811888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bobaleia/pseuds/Bobaleia
Summary: Boba Fett comes back to Jabba's palace with one goal in mind: to rescue Oola. But given that Oola's upped the stakes, asking for him to rescue the new brown-haired dancing girl as well... things just got more complicated.
Relationships: Boba Fett/Leia Organa, Boba Fett/Oola, Oola/Leia Organa
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020





	irritatingly beautiful

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wiccy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wiccy/gifts).



> Wiccy, I hope you enjoy!

Boba Fett waits in the shadows of Jabba’s so-called honored guest suite, hating every moment he’s there. He had to report that Solo had been captured, taken back by some idiot rebel with a lightsaber. Somehow, Jabba hadn’t thought it was Fett’s fault, a small mercy in an otherwise wretched day. Plans hadn’t gone smoothly in a while. It was enough to make him feel superstitious, make him check every bit of his armor a dozen times as he waited for her.

Waited for the one being that made coming to this dust-flea-infested world worthwhile.

Only a moment after he’d checked the flamethrower’s ignition for the third time, does she slide into view. She moves like a dancer, even now, when no one’s watching. Even now, when she doesn’t need to dance to keep herself alive.

He hates that thought, hates that she’s trapped here, when all he wants is for her to be on some better planet. Away from Jabba, away from the life of an enslaved Twi’lek dancer. Hell, even away from Boba himself, given that he wouldn’t be much good at keeping her safe. 

“Ready?” he asks her, his voice curt, even if his outstretched hand offers a touch as gentle as any he’s ever been able to make. He’s no good at talking. He’s better at actions. Or at least, he had been, until that damn blond Jedi-wannabe had ruined them. 

She shakes her head. “You know I want to come.”

If they were elsewhere, he might make a joke about the phrase. But here, in the shadows, he knows better. “So, let’s go. We both know the plan.” They’d sketched it out a hundred times, in the past six months of their strange… courtship? Whatever this was. He’d never bothered to try to name it, he knew only that Oola made his life worth living.

“There's a new girl,” Oola whispers. She leans in so close he knows a man not in armor could feel her warmth, through the scraps of lace she wears. He settles for imagining that warmth, knowing there’s no way to have her, not right now. “I can’t leave her.”

“But our plan…”

“I know I promised to come with you, but I can’t. Not yet.”

“Oola.” he hates the thought of her going back into the central chambers, back to Jabba’s grasp. He wants her safe with him. He wants her in his arms, in a warm bed, a thousand lightyears away from Tatooine. 

“I’ll have Jabba send her to you tonight. We’ll all escape at dawn. I promise.”

He didn’t want to have anyone else in his escape plans. He just wanted her. Granted, his daydreaming appetites might extend beyond wishing for just Oola, but they’d already discussed that. Monogamy wasn’t something either one of them was built for, no matter what they felt for each other. But that matter… it didn’t factor into the next moments. Only the plan did. “No,” he says.

“I’m not leaving another girl to him. Not when…” Oola shakes her head, her lekku moving with the movement. “Not when she can’t even dance. If she wasn’t so pretty, she’d be rancor food by now.”

“How’d he get her, if she’s not a dancer?” Boba asks, curious despite himself. 

“I’m not quite sure. I was told to help her dress and braid her hair… she’s fiery. Stubborn. The sort of girl you’d like.”

“She sounds like you.”

“Well I said you’d like her, didn’t I?” there’s a teasing note in her voice, a hint that no matter what her troubles have been, the darkness here hasn’t extinguished her light. “We’ll bring her with us. Besides, I already kissed her.”

“You what?”

“Jealous, Fett?” Oola reaches up to stroke the side of his helmet. “Don’t be. We have something, the two of us, and I swear to you that I’ll live long enough to see us happily out of this place.”

“Which would be a lot easier done if you stick to the plan,” he grunts out, trying to resist the allure of her touch, her smile, everything about her.

“How’s this for a new plan?”

“I don’t like new plans.”

“You don’t like much.” She places a finger over the ending of the T-shaped visor, as if hushing his lips. “I’ll follow the plan tonight. I’ll get out. I’ll have the new girl sent to you, and you smuggle her out with you. We can both go to the safe house.”

“I-”

She cuts him off, the only being in the galaxy brave enough to do so, “Beside, I’ve always worried about being lonely in that big old safehouse… can’t I bring a friend to entertain me?”

Some stupid sentimental part of Fett wants to ask if she’ll forget about him if that’s the case, if his limited time with her isn’t enough. Some even stupider part of him wants to tell her to forget the safehouse, to come with him for all his work, to sleep in his cot each night and wake beside him every morning, even if those mornings are measured only by the ship’s chrono, and those nights are full of danger.

But Fett merely stays silent, as he had the first time Oola had met him. He’d managed to be silent up until she’d challenged him to Dejarik, and handily beat him in three moves. After that, something close to a friendship had grown between the bounty hunter and the dancer, only for him to find out she’d been stolen and sold to Jabba. His past two years of work had been, in part, a way to figure out how to get here out of here, even as the time passed and he found himself more and more fond of her.

“So it’s a deal,” she says.

“This is why I never like negotiating with you,” he grumbles. 

She kisses the helmet, again pretending his lips are there. Somehow, she cares for him just the same, in his armor or out of it. That small kindness means a great deal to him. He wraps one arm around her, holding her against him for the shortest of moments. 

“So stop negotiating,” she replies. “And trust me.”

He considers it for a moment, then, realizes for once, he has no other options. “Fine,” he makes the word as curt as possible. “But you’re taking a blaster with you.”

“I had no plans to leave without one,” she retorts, a wicked bright fire in her eyes. The fire burns in her cheeks too, making her skin warm to a richer shade of green. He both hates and loves how much of her he can see all at once in the garment she wears, a feeling made all the more complicated by her refusal to wear much in the way of clothing even in those blissful days they’d spent together.

“Good.” He rests his hand on her warm cheek, his thumb brushing over her lip. “Go now.”

The plan unfolds quickly, though Boba Fett hates that now his part is one of waiting. He paces in his room, counting out the minutes, wondering if she’s reached the speeder yet, wondering if she’s okay.

Wondering what the hell he’s going to do with his life if it turns out she isn’t. 

But he can’t wonder for too long. He’s promised to save this girl, and to do so, he has to stick to the plan… which means every bit of his armor has to come off. He needs to look basic, average, a simple man on a simple mission. 

The task takes him the better part of an hour.

A moment later, there’s a pounding at the door. “Present from Lord Jabba!” someone calls out, before the door hisses open. There’s a sound of a woman yelling, before the door shuts once more.

“Touch me and I swear I’ll bite your hand off myself!” the woman snarls. She stands, her fists clenched and her teeth bared. 

It takes him a moment to recognize her, given the golden outfit and the elaborate hairstyle, but when realization dawns, his eyebrows arch up, an expression he’s used to hiding behind a helmet. But there’s no helmet now, nothing to disguise his thoughts, as Boba finds himself face-to-face with Leia Organa herself.

“I have no plan to do anything of the sort,” he replies, folding his arms. “I thought Oola explained the situation to you.”

“She did,” Leia’s eyes flash, as bright as comets, “but I have no reason to trust you.”

“Do you trust her though?” 

“I…” The fire melds into something softer, something a great deal like a blush. It reminds him of how she’d looked on Cloud City. It reminds him too, how much he’d wanted her, that day he’d first seen her, and how time seemed to have not dulled that desire. “I do trust her. Not you, though.”

“You have no idea who I am,” Boba says, a private smile playing at his lips.

But the smile isn’t private, not now that he’s dressed in a faded flight suit, and worse, it’s _noticed_ by the former princess of Alderaan. “Should I?” Leia’s brow furrows. “Your voice… it is familiar.”

“Hmm.” He says nothing else, but tries his best not to look in her general direction. “Time’s wasting, prin--” he catches himself just in time.

“What did you call me?”

“Nothing,” he mutters. 

She doesn’t buy it, because she’s no fool. Instead, she reaches up and grabs him by the shoulder, pulling him to face her. “You called me…” she begins, but freezes, as she stares up into his eyes. Her blush grows deeper, and she tries to step forward, but stumbles, tripping in her complicated dancer’s getup.

Oola had said the new girl wasn’t much of a dancer. Of course she wasn’t. She was a spoiled, pampered, delicate, princess… one whose skin was as soft as Coruscanti silk and whose lips were as pink as a fine Alderaanian wine. No wonder Oola had kissed her. Fett found himself wanting to do much the same thing.

“What did I call you?” he asks her, his voice a low murmur.

“You…” Leia swallows. She’s nearly too beautiful to look at this close up. She needed to be on a pedestal, or a mission control room, away from the general onlooker. She needed to be somewhere else, somewhere far, far from Boba Fett, who is rapidly realizing his plan will be anything but simple.

A point proven quite handily when Leia kisses him, hard, on the lips. 

He leans into the kiss for a long moment, longer than is prudent, long enough to feel the heat of desire coil at the base of his spine. “I’m with the Rebellion,” he lies, because a lie is easier than even beginning to explain this tangled mess. “Let’s go.”

Thankfully, Leia doesn’t argue. Or rather, after a second kiss, and a hint of a third, she decides that the argument can be tabled for a little while, as the two sneak out of Jabba’s palace. Along the way, she proves herself to be a much better shot than a dancer, which only serves to increase Boba’s annoyingly strong desire for her.

When they’re halfway to the first safehouse, one carved from the rocks at the edge of Mos Espa, Boba’s private comm flashes a simple message. Oola is safe. 

A breath escapes him, one that carries far more emotion than he’s ever said. Leia, sitting next to him in the landspeeder, her hands steady on the stolen blaster, turns to look at him. “What’s the matter?”

“Oola’s safe.”

“Isn’t that good?” Leia asks. “I mean… you love her, right?" The words cut into him, removing all his mental layers of protection as surely as his physical layers are gone. "If you’re doing all this for her. Hells, if you’re rescuing me too, you’ve got to love her.”

“I’m doing it for the Reb--” he tries to lie, but she cuts him off.

“That’s a load of bantha poodoo and we both know it. No Rebel soldier would kiss his commanding officer like that, sir, nor would they shoot to kill the way you do.”

Fett’s jaw clenches. He has _got_ to stop being so attracted to smart women. “Didn’t see you complaining.”

“I happen to enjoy being alive.”

“And being kissed?”

Her blush returns once more. “On occasion.”

Fett smirks, carefully parking the landspeeder and exiting. As he crosses in front of the ship to offer her a hand exiting, he takes the chance to kiss her once more. Leia’s hand goes to the back of his neck, brushing over the curls at the edge of his hairline, a touch so intimate it makes him shiver. “Is this an occasion then?” he asks, as he lifts her easily out of the ship.

“Don’t push your luck. I want to see Oola.” Leia kicks one leg, narrowly missing his shin. “And I want you to put me down. Now.”

Fett’s all too happy to oblige, dropping her in the sand, and turning to face the camouflaged door of the safehouse. It opens, and he can’t hear any of Leia’s complaints over the sound of his steady heartbeat at seeing Oola there, in the doorway, dressed in clothes of her own choosing, wearing her family’s crest instead of Jabba’s mark of ownership, smiling as if she’d just won the whole planet in a game of Sabacc.

“I’m right here,” she says, clearly having heard Leia’s comment. “You two made good time.”

“Mm,” Fett doesn’t disagree with her comment, but he also doesn’t agree, since that would involve giving some credit to the cursing princess’s dead-eye aim. Instead, he crosses the distance between them and pulls Oola into a proper kiss.

The sort not filtered between his helmet. The sort that sends both of their hearts racing, faster than ever, as their breathing mingles. She’s so warm against his nearly bare skin. He knows that’s partially that she’s Twi’lek, that they run warmer, but he thinks it’s partially because she’s his home, his hearth fire, everything that makes the long bitter days worth it. “Oola,” he whispers, speaking to her in her native language, the one he’d learned for her sake. He’d done a great deal of things for Oola’s sake, some, like learning to sleep next to another living being, far more foolish than others. But all of them, he knows, are worth it, for the prize of her happiness. “I fully intend on enjoying this safe house with you. But later. Your, uh, friend, doesn’t need to know who I am.”

“Is that so?” Oola traces the outline of his jaw, her fingertips brushing over his rare stubble. 

“We have a complicated history,” he admits, before ducking down for another kiss, this one accompanied by his wandering hands, exploring her curves in ways he hasn’t been able to in at least a year. He fully intends to make up for lost time with her. Later though, after the problem of the princess is resolved. 

Not now. 

“You seem to have that with a great many people,” Oola comments. She rests her head on his shoulder for a moment, reaching out her hand to beckon Leia forward.

“Goes with the occupation,” Fett mutters, just as Leia comes within less than a metre of them. 

The princess has sand glittering on her bare skin, and a braid that’s now half-undone, and yet, she’s still irritatingly beautiful, a fact that is only all the more clear as Oola turns to kiss her now. “Thank you for trusting me, my new friend,” Oola says, carefully adjusting the loose locks of Leia’s hair.

“Do you welcome all your new friends like this?” Leia says, a gentle teasing tone in her voice. She kisses Oola’s cheek. The two are happy, Fett realizes, the sort of happy he's only used to seeing from a distance, seeing on faces of strangers passing by him, never people he knows by name.

“Only the ones I hope to have stay with me for a little while.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Leia replies. Her gaze lingers on Boba, tracing over his body with eyes as intense as blaster fire. “And your… partner? Is he staying?”

Fett shakes his head, trying his damnedest to stick to some sort of a semblance of a plan. “I need to cover our tracks.”

“Will you come back?” Leia asks. “Before… I mean, before I leave." Come back? Fett has to shake his head. He'd planned nothing of the sort, once Leia had been added into the mix. But now? His mind, the irrationally frustrating part of it, the one that refused to simply make calculations and stick to plans, suggested a thousand pleasant ways to pass an afternoon with the two women, if he came back. Worse, it's clear to Fett both women are thinking similar thoughts, as Oola's fingers dance down Leia's shoulder, and the princess's blushing stammer grows. "I’ll have to head back to my, uh, home, soon enough.”

Oola embraces Leia from behind, so that Fett can see both of their faces, a matched pair of brilliant expressions and tempting lips, watching him. “Yes,” she says, “Come back soon.”

“I don’t make promises,” he mutters, turning away from them. But even as he does, he has to admit that a plan isn’t the same thing as a promise. A plan is something he’s damn good at, if tonight’s any indication. And he’s definitely planning on coming back to this irritatingly beautiful little safe house as soon as possible.


End file.
